Faithfully
by adaptation
Summary: Post 5x10. Jo finds Heaven a little too good to be true. Precurser to "Darkness, Darkness".


**Faithfully**_  
a story by Adaptation_**  
**

**Disclaimer:** Supernatural was created by Eric Kripke, et al, and I own nothing. I just borrow his stuff and play with it when I get bored. :3  
**Status:** One-shot, complete. **  
Spoilers:** Up to and including 5x10 "Abandon All Hope"

It was different than she'd expected. It had taken her a few hours to realize she was in Heaven. She'd looked around at the woods behind the Roadhouse, stared with confusion up at the tree house she'd built with her father, and she'd wondered if, maybe, the explosion had knocked her back in time. Then she'd shaken her head hard, remembered that she wasn't Kathleen Turner in iPeggy Sue Got Married/i, and taken a better look around.

The wood in the tree house looked brand new. The carving of her name at the base of the tree was fresh. The slash marks that had covered her body from the hellhound mauling she'd undergone earlier that day were completely gone. But none of those gave her pause as much as when she'd heard her father's voice.

Strong and healthy, it carried from the back entrance of the Roadhouse to where she stood twenty feet east. Her head jerked toward the sound. "Dad?" she called warily. She'd felt stupid even saying it; he'd been dead for years. He'd been killed on a hunt only six months after that tree house had been thrown up. He'd barely had time for it; she remembered him promising, weekend after weekend, to finish it, and it was only when she'd tried to help – and wound up slicing her hand open on a piece of scrap metal – that Mom had nagged him into completing it.

"Jo, sweetheart, get your behind in here. I wanna teach you how to hustle." As she approached the back door, she was overwhelmed with the sense of déjà vu that slammed into her like a wave. Was it still déjà vu if it really had happened before?

She didn't know how long it had taken her to find that creek in the woods. She'd followed it straight to Ash's room at the Roadhouse, where they used to play Crash Bandicoot together. But it wasn't until her third unusual encounter that she realized what was happening. It was only when she was confronted by the sight of Dean Winchester sitting on the front porch of her dream house that Jo Harvelle had known she was in Heaven.

From the moment he'd pulled her shotgun out of her hands, she'd known that she had it bad for Dean Winchester. The leather jacket, the cocky grin, and the hot car didn't help. He was every bad boy she'd ever wanted rolled into one and then dipped in a boiling pot of sexy. It had killed her to know he didn't think about her _like that_. She'd seen the look in his eyes when she'd shown up in that apartment building in Philly. He'd looked at her like his annoying little sister.

He didn't look at her like that in Heaven. In Heaven, he looked at her like he had that night at Bobby's. Like he was trying to imagine her naked.

Every night since she'd died, Jo had amazing, loving sex with Dean Winchester. Every morning, he helped her make bacon and eggs. Every afternoon, he talked about a hunt he couldn't wait to get her help on. All of it, the whole package, was exactly what she'd imagined every night as she fell asleep. She'd sworn to herself that she'd become the kind of woman Dean Winchester would want, and in death she'd accomplished that goal. But every night as she fell asleep in Dean's arms, she couldn't help but remind herself that none of it was real.

As far as she knew, Dean was alive and well – or as well as he could be when he was fighting the apocalypse. The heartbeat thudding steadily against her ear wasn't really Dean's. The lips that kissed her breathless every morning weren't really Dean's. It was all an illusion. And if she wasn't Jo Harvelle, she would have been absolutely fine with that.

Her father would have laughed and told her not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but she'd never been good at accepting presents. This one in particular was far too much to accept.

It was on the sixth night, as she lay naked and spent on the rug in front of the fireplace, with Dean's breath stirring her hair, that she decided.

If it was the last thing she did, Joanna Beth Harvelle was going to escape from Heaven.


End file.
